12 Hours on Tinder Changed My Life

After going through a particularly rough patch in her personal life, Jen Kirkman decided to put her best face forward on a cool new app called Tinder. Surely if the kids are doing it...

By
Jen Kirkman

May 23, 2015

Tyler Joe

I've never dabbled in online dating. It just isn't my idea of romance. My idea of a meet-cute is meeting a friend of a friend at a party while pretending that I wasn't looking for love.

"It happened! I met someone when I least expected it," is my preferred distortion of reality.

So plugging in likes and dislikes into a bio, uploading a picture, and essentially pursuing résumés for potential candidates shatters my fantasy. It's all so terribly clinical. So, what I'm about to say may strike you as surprising: 12 hours on the online dating app Tinder changed my life.

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Don't be jealous, Tinder users who continually 'swipe out.' I didn't meet someone. This isn't one of those happy endings. I'm not writing this from my, sorry, our bed on a lazy Sunday morning while Gary is out picking up some coffee and pastry. That's not the story we're telling here.

Last autumn, a few weeks after I turned 40, I was feeling particularly sorry for myself. Turning 40 was okay, save for the handful of gray pubic hairs that showed up just in time to remind me that the factory inside my body is shutting down and laying off all non-essential employees—like the little elves whose job it is to paint those suckers black. But I'm divorced and the dating frenzy that ensued once that piece of paper was signed was at a stand still.

Here's an example of "a date" I went on: A guy I know through mutual friends asked me out for a drink on a Friday night. (A Friday! That's the weekend.) I bought a new outfit. "A" drink turned into three. Conversation flowed. We had so much in common! We both didn't understand the appeal of watching The Bachelorette un-ironically! Then he smiled and said, "My girlfriend loves The Bachelorette, un-ironically and, Oh, you know what? Do you mind if I text her real quick? She should just be getting off of work now."

I tried to figure out if I could return my third drink even though I had taken a sip. His reality TV loving girlfriend was 26 years old. He was my age. I felt so used. He has sex with that millennial but uses me for intellectual stimulation!? I'm not some mind whore you know! If you ask me to have wine and you don't ask it like this, "DoyouwanttogetadrinksometimeIHAVEAGIRLFRIEND," I'll gladly meet you for a drink if I have a spare hour and I won't even have to shower.

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Also, I'll admit it: I'm picky.

There's this picture I once saw of David Bowie from 1977. He's lounging and smoking on a balcony in Paris surrounded by roses. He's very thin and wearing an impeccable, perfectly-tailored outfit. And…unless that's you, I'm not interested.

Defeated by my Modern Love column-level despair, I called my friend Jordan to join me for a last-minute Sunday morning coffee hang. She said that she already had a plan to meet her best male friend, John, but I was free to join. John, however, is one of my exes.

Well ex is too strong of a word, really. Jordan set us up; we went on a few dates; the chemistry wasn't there. I really wanted the chemistry to be there so I kept following up until finally I realized that our text volleys were leading nowhere. We decided to remain cordial so that if we ever ran into one another, due to our mutual friend, it wouldn't be weird. Thank God we planned ahead for the fateful, not-awkward brunch that occurred a year later. It wasn't weird at all.

Over coffee, Jordan and John regaled me with tales of their recent experiences on Tinder. They'd both gone on a few dates and found it fun. So fun, in fact, that they continued to swipe and giggle while I tried to convince them to a stack of pancakes as an appetizer. I told them that all of this swiping and waiting to be liked sounded exhausting even though I was the one holding my head in my hands unable to smile.

John grabbed my phone. "You're not on Tinder?"

While I launched into my famous, "No. I was taught never to talk to strangers, and did you know that the Internet is full of strangers?" speech, John started snapping my picture with my own phone like a paparazzi unable to afford a subtle telephoto lens.

"What are you doing?"

"Signing you up for an account."

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John and Jordan passed my phone back and forth asking me for passwords here and there and, within moments, I was a woman available to men ages 30-45 within a five-mile radius.

John handed my phone back to me and over some coffee mimosas I swiped left and right.

Forty-Year-Old Long Hair Jesus-y Type Guy? It's a match! I felt a rush. He had already seen my picture and approved me? Even though I was just sitting here eating whipped cream off of a stack of starter pancakes with a spoon? Aww.

Cute Blonde Punk-y Looking Single Dad. It's a match!

The Writer Guy in Sunglasses Who Seems Hot. It's a match!

I looked at John and Jordan excitedly. "Now what?"

This is where Tinder gets tricky. Writer Guy in Sunglasses didn't write to me. Whatever, I thought. I'd never date someone so ambivalent, anyway. Long Hair Jesus Guy just sent me a heart emoticon. Either he's emotionally stunted or a player. The real Jesus hung out with prostitutes so why wouldn't Tinder Jesus be a little slutty? Blonde Single Dad wrote me, "Hey, Jen. How's your day going so far?" What is he, my morning barista?

I continued swiping until I arrived at John's profile. I looked directly at John and blinked. It was like I'd stumbled upon a glitch in the Matrix: here was the avatar version of an IRL man beckoning me to digitally seduce him. We both swiped right to be polite.

I went to bed that night with hundreds of men in the palm of my hand. I continued to swipe until my thumb went numb. There was something vaguely satisfying about being picked by someone I'd picked too.

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Ultimately, though, I deleted Tinder after just 12 hours. It started to feel like playing the slots: I'd sit there, slack jawed, drooling, and mindlessly swiping to try to get a match/three cherries in a row. With gambling you can go to bed broke and with Tinder you can go to bed broken. Sure, I could meet hundreds of men, but I could also get rejected by hundreds of men. I had heard too many tales from frustrated girlfriends who would end up texting guys for days without ever meeting up. Were these guys just looking for a new and interesting way to get Carpal Tunnel?

Tinder showed me that there are tons of people out there. All I have to do is leave my house. I refuse to believe that everyone is trapped in a computer. Plus, if Scrunchies, a possible Clinton president, and tiny backacks are back in fashion, then the human-to-human contact trend must be due for a renaissance.

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